WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in January, his new national security adviser, Michael Flynn, sent a text to a former business associate telling him that a plan to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East in partnership with Russian interests was “good to go,” according to a witness who spoke with congressional investigators.

Flynn had assured his former associate that U.S. sanctions against Russia would immediately be “ripped up” by the Trump administration, a move that would help facilitate the deal, the associate told the witness.

The witness provided the account to Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who detailed the allegations in a letter Wednesday to the panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina.

Cummings did not identify the witness, whom he described as a whistleblower. But he asked Gowdy to issue a subpoena to the White House for documents related to Flynn, saying the committee has “credible allegations” that Flynn “sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners.”

Robert Kelner, an attorney representing Flynn, declined to comment. White House lawyer Ty Cobb said, “I respectfully decline to comment on anonymous information which impacts the special counsel investigation.” He was referring to the ongoing inquiry on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

According to a whistleblower, a Flynn business associate bragged that Flynn would end sanctions on Russia to clear the way for this project.

By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.comDec 6, 2017On President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day, a former business parter of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn allegedly bragged that Flynn told him Trump would quickly lift US sanctions on Russia — a move that would pave the way for a controversial plan to build nuclear plants across the Middle East, with Russian help.

That’s the explosive, but unverified, allegation of a whistleblower cooperating with House Democrats probing the myriad scandals surrounding Flynn, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about his contacts with a senior Russian diplomat.

The allegation has been made public by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee — who is demanding that his Republican counterpart on the committee investigate Flynn and others involved in the matter more aggressively.

The project in question — promoted by a group of former senior US military officers, and often described as a “Marshall Plan” of sorts — would involve US companies working with Russian companies to build and operate nuclear plants in the Middle East, and export spent fuel from those plants.

In June 2015, Flynn flew to Egypt and Israel to “gauge attitudes” on the proposal, Newsweek’s Jeff Stein has reported. And one of the companies involved in the project covered his travel expenses and wrote him a check for $25,000 for the trip, though it’s not clear if Flynn cashed the check.

But reports over the last few months have suggested that Flynn continued to promote the project after the election, and even after he had been sworn in as national security adviser.

One businessman involved in the project — Alex Copson of ACU Strategic Partners — even dubbed it the “Trump/Putin M.E. [Middle East] Marshall Plan,” according to an email obtained by Reuters.

Now, new allegations are coming from a whistleblower who says he met Copson at a Washington, DC, event on Inauguration Day — and that Copson had some very interesting things to say about the project.

Michael Flynn’s business partner allegedly said this project was a pretext for expanding the US military presence in the Middle East

According to the whistleblower, Copson flat-out said the following things:

That he “just got” a text message from Flynn saying the nuclear plant project was “good to go,” and that his business colleagues should “put things in place”

That Flynn was making sure sanctions on Russia would be “ripped up,” which would let the project go forward

That this was the “best day” of his life, and that the project would “make a lot of very wealthy people”

That the project would also provide a pretext for expanding a US military presence in the Middle East (the pretext of defending the nuclear plants)

That citizens of Middle Eastern countries would be better off “when we recolonize the Middle East”

The whistleblower said that Copson quickly displayed what he claimed to be a text message from Flynn that appeared to have been sent during Trump’s inauguration speech. But the whistleblower says he or she could not read the actual message. Still, he or she claims to have been disturbed enough by the interaction to have documented it at the time.

Perhaps most intriguingly of all, Cummings writes that he told Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team about all this some time ago — and that they asked him to delay publicly revealing this information “until they completed certain investigation steps.”

World Bank to raise $200 billion to fight climate change SBS News 4 Dec 18The World Bank Group will spearhead a five-year, $200 billion investment to fight climate change. The World Bank has unveiled a $200 billion in climate action investment for 2021-25, adding this amounts to a doubling of its current five-year funding.

The World Bank said the move, coinciding with a UN climate summit meeting of some 200 nations in Poland, represented a “significantly ramped up ambition” to tackle climate change, “sending an important signal to the wider global community to do the same.”

Developed countries are committed to lifting combined annual public and private spending to $100 billion in developing countries by 2020 to fight the impact of climate change — up from 48.5 billion in 2016 and 56.7 billion last year, according to latest OECD data.

In a statement, the World Bank said the breakdown of the $200 billion would comprise “approximately $100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank.”

Around one third of the remaining funding will come from two World Bank Group agencies with the rest private capital “mobilised by the World Bank Group.”……..

Much of the climate action financing is being set aside for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, notably through development of renewable energy strategies.

However, the World Bank stated that “a key priority is boosting support for climate adaptation,” given the millions of people already battling the consequences of extreme weather.

“By ramping up direct adaptation finance to reach around $50 billion over (fiscal) 21-25, the World Bank will, for the first time, give this equal emphasis alongside investments that reduce emissions,” the bank stated.

Given the urgency to act in the face of sea level rise, flooding and drought “we must fight the causes, but also adapt to the consequences that are often most dramatic for the world’s poorest people,” said World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva.

The countries whose representatives are meeting at the UN climate summit which opened Sunday in the Polish city of Katowice are seeking to make good on commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Our greatest threat’: David Attenborough’s grim warning on climate Naturalist David Attenborough has told delegates at a UN conference the world is facing the end of civilisation if it does not unite to tackle climate change. SBS News, 4 Dec 18British broadcaster and environmentalist David Attenborough has urged world leaders, meeting in Poland to agree ways to limit global warming, to get on and tackle “our greatest threat in thousands of years”.Known for countless nature films, Attenborough has gained prominence recently with his Blue Planet II series, which highlighted the devastating effect of pollution on the oceans.

Leaders of the world, you must lead,” said the naturalist, given a “People’s seat” at the two-week UN climate conference in the Polish coal city of Katowice alongside two dozen heads of state and government.

“The continuation of our civilisations and the natural world upon which we depend, is in your hands,” he said.

“Climate change is running faster than we are and we must catch up sooner rather than later before it is too late.”

Attenborough told the delegates: “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate Change.”……….

Representatives of some of the most powerful countries and biggest polluters were conspicuous by their absence, and the United States is quitting the UN climate process.

To maximise the chances of success in Poland, technical talks began on Sunday, a day early, with delegates from nearly 200 nations debating how to meet the Paris target of limiting global warming to between 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 3.6 Fahrenheit).

Michal Kurtyka, Poland’s deputy environment minister and president of the talks, said that without success in Katowice, Paris would not be a success, as it had only decided what was needed, not how it could be done.

the decision to pursue Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors (MSRs )may not be based on market laws. For MSRs to succeed, they will likely be developed with appropriate political support and military funding.

If a nation wants an unlimited power supply for cutting-edge military technologies, then the MSR is indeed a very good candidate.

small modular reactors fitted with MSR technology could effectively supply electricity at remote military bases.

When a technology has some potential, the military sector can provide appropriate funding to quickly prototype products, which won’t necessarily have commercially viable features

Molten Salt Reactors: Military Applications Behind the Energy Promises, POWER,12/02/2018 | Jean-Baptiste Peu-Duvallon The commercial nuclear power sector has evolved with great help from the military-industrial complex. Research and development funded for the purpose of national defense has resulted in advances directly applicable to the power industry. For molten salt reactor designs to succeed, political support and military dollars may again be necessary.

……… under the leadership of its director Alvin M. Weinberg, the Oak Ridge Laboratory pursued the concept for civilian applications with the construction of a 7.4-MWth MSR, which operated for five years before being permanently shutdown in 1969. The reason testing was stopped was mainly political, as the MSR experiment in Oak Ridge wasn’t providing enough workload to other laboratories, while at the same time research on fast-breeding reactors was ramping up, requiring the engagement of more and more resources .

It was not only political, however. While the MSR concept is quite simple on paper, its industrialization is quite complex. Because the coolant is a mixture of chemicals rather than water, it provokes the release of significant quantities of tritium, which must be removed continuously. It generates other issues too, such as speedy corrosion of standard alloys, and also core lifetime issues when the coolant is moderated with graphite.

Because no MSRs have operated after the early 1970s, none of the technical solutions currently proposed to solve the outstanding issues have actually been tested. Still, new MSR projects are suddenly popping up for two main reasons: the Fukushima events and re-emerging military needs. …….

Nuclear Power in the New Weapons Race. MSRs have also gotten renewed interest following significant evolutions in military affairs. Indeed, since 2010, the U.S. military has started to deploy effective defense systems against ballistic missiles. In turn, it encourages rival powers to develop alternatives for their deterrence such as extreme-range hypersonic vehicles and low-altitude supersonic missiles.

During a speech to the nation on March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin revealed to the world the Russian ambition of extreme endurance. “We’ve started the development of new types of strategic weapons that do not use ballistic flight paths on the way to the target,” he said. “One of them is creation of a small-size highly powerful nuclear power plant that can be planted inside the hull of a cruise missile identical to our air-launched X-101 or the United States’ Tomahawk, but at the same time is capable of guaranteeing a flight range that is dozens of times greater, which is practically unlimited,” Putin added.

Beyond postures and statements, however, it seems there is still some work to be done. It has been reported that all flight tests of this new cruise missile resulted in short-term crashes.

Also, since the emergence of China as a military power, the probability of a high-intensity conflict in the Asia-Pacific region is growing. In such a case, the control over the vastness of the Pacific Ocean will be the aim of each party. Extreme ranges and endurance would be a key advantage for a potential winner.

If a nation wants an unlimited power supply for cutting-edge military technologies, then the MSR is indeed a very good candidate. As previously explained, the high temperature generated by an MSR makes it well-suited for airborne operations, while much more compact than a PWR for other applications. The advent of unmanned vehicles also makes the use of MSR technology easier, because radiation shielding requirements become far less stringent with no crew.

To counter the threat of new hypersonic vehicles currently under development, armies are again launching research for directed-energy weapons, such as high-energy lasers, which require huge power supplies to run efficiently. Finally, small modular reactors fitted with MSR technology could effectively supply electricity at remote military bases.

Although these military applications may sound like science fiction, one past example demonstrates the definitive military advantage procured by a high-temperature reactor over a PWR: the development of Alfa class submarines (Figure 4) in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The Alfa-class submarine is still today considered the fastest, deepest, and most-agile nuclear submarine ever built. Its deployment resulted in the urgent design and manufacture of faster NATO torpedoes, like the U.S. Mark 48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) or British Spearfish, to counter something that was virtually invulnerable when first put in service.

What made the Alfa possible? A lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor, which shares the same main feature of the MSR: high temperature delivery, resulting in a high-power-density design, enabling a small, light, and powerful reactor for the submarine. However, as at ambient temperature the high-density lead-bismuth would freeze, the quayside maintenance operations aimed at preventing any irremediable core damage due to coolant freezing were very complicated and costly. While lead-bismuth and molten-salt reactors share many common points, MSRs are less costly and more easily maintainable.

Developing Viable MSR Designs

In France, the energy sector has not shown interest in MSR technology, as its current PWR fleet delivers competitive energy while achieving a very high level of safety. Furthermore, new PWR designs (EPRs) are intrinsically much safer than the Fukushima GE Mark I, which was designed in the 1960s.

MSRs are not just a different design, however; they are a different sector. MSR developers must essentially start from scratch with dedicated codes and regulations, dedicated licensing processes, dedicated fuel production facilities, dedicated reactors with dedicated highly trained operators, and dedicated waste reprocessing plants. Nonetheless, the decision to pursue MSRs may not be based on market laws. For MSRs to succeed, they will likely be developed with appropriate political support and military funding.

When a technology has some potential, the military sector can provide appropriate funding to quickly prototype products, which won’t necessarily have commercially viable features but will provide the groundwork for further refinement. Then, step by step, the remaining short-comings will be overcome to make a practical product for commercial operation. ■

TAKASHI TSUJI, Nikkei staff writer, DECEMBER 04, 2018 TOKYO — A Japan-led public-private consortium is set to abandon a Turkish nuclear power project that had been touted as a model for Tokyo’s export of infrastructure, Nikkei has learned.The delayed project’s construction costs have ballooned to around 5 trillion yen ($44 billion), nearly double the original estimate, making it difficult for lead builder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and its partners to continue with the plans.

The increase was due to heightened safety requirements in the wake of the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The recent fall in the Turkish lira has also contributed to the cost increases.

The decision to cancel the project, now in final negotiations among the parties, comes as a blow to Japan’s nuclear industry, which is looking for avenues for growth overseas as it becomes increasingly unlikely that a new plant will be built at home post-Fukushima.

The Japanese and Turkish governments agreed in 2013 on the project, with an alliance of Japanese and French businesses centered on Mitsubishi Heavy to build four reactors in the city of Sinop on the Black Sea. Initial plans had construction beginning in 2017, with the first reactor coming online in 2023………

In 2017, global investment toward building new nuclear projects plunged roughly 70% year on year to $9 billion, according to the International Energy Agency. With safety costs rising, nuclear has grown less competitive with other forms of energy.

While Fukushima suffered a blow, trade ties between Japan and Taiwan avoided any major impact. The Diplomat , By Thisanka Siripala, December 03, 2018 On Friday, Japan and Taiwan signed off on five bilateral trade pacts just days after Taiwan voted in a referendum to uphold an import ban on agricultural products from areas surrounding the Fukushima nuclear fallout.

Last week, 7.8 million voters in Taiwan approved renewing a legally binding food ban that was originally imposed after the nuclear disaster in 2011. The ongoing agricultural ban covers five Japanese prefectures including Fukushima and nearby Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Chiba over an extended two year period. Although the setback was expected to put a strain on bilateral relations, outright animosity has been diverted for now………..

More than $1m of industry funding is being funnelled into a runoff election to decide who pays for a power company’s botched project – shareholders or the people?

This is a convoluted tale of secret corporate money in politics, the capture of regulators by those they are meant to regulate, incompetence, and greed.

We learned this week that more than $1m in dark money – secretly sourced political spending – is pouring into Tuesday’s runoff election for Georgia’s Public Service Commission (PSC).

The PSC is powerful; by setting rates it determines how much Georgians pay for electricity each month, and among its mandates is to safeguard the public interest by regulating Georgia’s energy industry.

But PSC elections have tended to fly under the radar, and they’ve long been dominated by candidates vetted and approved by Georgia Power – Georgia’s monopoly energy company – and its owner, the Southern Company.

So what’s with all the dark money this time around?

There are four key players in this drama: the Southern Company, which owns Georgia Power; a political committee called “Georgians for a Better Future”; a lobbying group called Nuclear Matters; and a powerful trade group called the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Spending these unprecedented sums in support of the incumbent Republican commissioner, Chuck Eaton, is “Georgians for a Brighter Future”, established just weeks ago for the specific purpose of intervention in our PSC runoff, in which Eaton faces a vigorous challenge from the Democratic rising star Lindy Miller.

Just three weeks into its existence, “Georgians for a Brighter Future” has been lavishly and swiftly funded for this mission by Nuclear Matters, the Washington-based “non-profit” that lobbies for the nuclear energy industry.

Thanks to America’s corrupted campaign finance laws, Nuclear Matters’ funders are secret. But the likely sponsors are not hard to establish. Nuclear Matters itself is an arm of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nationwide nuclear industry’s trade association (we used to call them cartels), funded in part by the Southern Company.

Georgia Power’s CEO, Paul Bowers, is on Nuclear Matters’ board of directors. Former Georgia PSC chairman and diligent industry servant Stan Wise sits on its “advocacy council”. So does University of Georgia professor David Gattie, who provides consistent academic cover for Georgia Power’s business agenda and has not to my knowledge disclosed whether he receives industry funding.

Wise, according to reporting in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “resigned [from the PSC] earlier this year but hung on to his post long enough to join Eaton and three other members in green-lighting Georgia Power’s plan to continue construction on two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, a project now running five years behind schedule with billions of dollars in cost overruns.”

Here the purpose of this dark money assault on Georgia voters becomes clearer.

Plant Vogtle is Georgia Power’s – and therefore the Southern Company’s – nuclear power station in eastern Georgia. In 2013 the Southern Company began construction of two new reactors at Vogtle, backed by $8.3bn in federal loan guarantees.

Then the Southern Company proceeded to botch the project. Now years behind schedule and billions over budget, we face a classic political dilemma: who will pay? Georgia Power, the Southern Company, and their shareholders? Or Georgia Power’s customers – the people?

Not surprisingly, the Southern Company is determined that Georgia’s energy consumers – “ratepayers” – should pay for billions in cost overruns. Under our country’s perverse rules of corporate governance, this is, I suppose, rational. The alternative is that their shareholders and executives take a haircut.

Enter Democrat Lindy Miller, the first-time candidate, who fought her way against the odds into this runoff. Miller is no opponent of nuclear energy and she supports continued construction of Plant Vogtle to deliver cheap energy to Georgia without massive greenhouse gas emissions. She just doesn’t think Georgia ratepayers should pay for the Southern Company’s gross failure to meet a budget or a schedule.

It seems that’s just not acceptable to the Southern Company. As with the investment bankers and rating agencies who were bailed out despite their responsibility for the 2008 financial crisis, the Southern Company wants the public to bear the cost of its malpractice.

So we see this massive, 11th-hour political intervention in support of Eaton, the Southern Company’s chosen candidate. Why? Because he will reliably vote to saddle Georgia’s teachers, firefighters, veterans, retirees and working families with higher energy bills to bail out his powerful benefactors.

This story presents a microcosm of much that is wrong with American politics. The Southern Company’s dominance of Georgia’s PSC is what policy nerds call “regulatory capture”. With a relatively modest investment of millions, this multibillion-dollar industry is attempting to buy a seat on the public body that regulates it, even though Georgia law nominally forbids regulated entities from funding candidates for regulatory offices.

This money, like so much political spending, is laundered through a series of lobby groups and “non-profits” to obscure its origins and the agenda behind it. Dark money political spending, which is meant to mislead the public and serves only the interests of concentrated corporate power, should be banned by Congress and state legislatures.

It’s worth recalling that the Southern Company in its present form was born of trust-busting action ordered by the United States Congress. In 1947, its parent company, Commonwealth & Southern Energy, was dissolved by the Securities and Exchange Commission under the anti-trust authority of the Public Utility Holding Company Act. So the Southern Company as we know it now was born, ironically, of anti-trust action.

Fast-forward 71 years. Unrestrained corporate consolidation is once again crushing consumers and competitors in nearly every major sector of the US economy, while behemoth firms and trade groups wield virtually limitless political power. The Southern Company, the monopoly power giant, would force citizens to subsidize its own inefficiency, and they’re using their financial and political muscle to buy this seat on the PSC and evade financial responsibility.

There are good arguments for scale in energy production. But perhaps it’s time to revisit the anti-trust victories of the early 20th century.

But that interpretation misses the many important but less prominent insights in the UCS report.

Nuclear power plants are associated with significantly less carbon dioxide emitted per unit of electricity produced when compared to fossil fuel plants, even when including the emissions associated with the fuel chainrequired to generate nuclear energy. Therefore, the report’s basis for argument—if utilities were to replace “existing nuclear plants with natural gas and coal rather than low-carbon sources,” then it would compromise “our ability to achieve the deep cuts in carbon emissions” (p. 1)—is obvious. Whether nuclear plants would be replaced by fossil fueled plants is questionable.

Nuclear plants are hugely expensive, and it has been known for a while that they are not an economically competitive choice. Thus, building new nuclear plants makes no sense. In the UCS report too, the power planning model used does not recommend constructing new nuclear plants, even at the highest assumed price of carbon. The authors, unfortunately, do not highlight this outcome of their modeling, sidestepping its implications by not “assessing the potential role of new nuclear plants in meeting long-term emissions reduction targets” (p. 12).

For decades, nuclear advocates had a comforting response: although expensive to build, nuclear plants are cheap to operate and profitable in the long run. That is no longer true. Several nuclear plants have been shut down because the utilities operating them are losing money. As shown by the UCS report and similar studies, many more are likely to be shuttered.

So, the question in essence is how to deal with a dying source of electricity generation in the United States. Globally, the share of nuclear energy in the world’s electricity generation has been declining continuously since 1996. The UCS report is a plea to keep the nuclear industry on life support by states providing subsidies to nuclear power plants that are not profitable, provided the operators of the nuclear plants and the states play by some rules. Regardless of these subsidies, it remains the case that over the next few decades, the reactor fleet will have to be retired. Some of these reactors are nearly half a century old, and some have a checkered past.

Many others have demanded that states subsidize nuclear plants, and there is even a tool kit to help plant owners to continue profiting at public expense. It is the imposition of various requirements that distinguishes the UCS report from the rest of the chorus—and unfortunately the media has by and large highlighted the call for subsidies without the conditions. The conditions are: “Require plant owners to open their financial books and demonstrate need”; “make financial support for distressed plants temporary [and] periodically assess whether continued support is necessary and cost effective”; “Ensure that qualifying plants maintain strong safety performance”; “Strengthen renewable energy and efficiency standards”; “Develop transition plans for affected workers and communities”; and state “requirements [on resources subject to state jurisdiction, such as the use of local water supplies for cooling and the impact of cooling-water discharges] need to be vigorously enforced”.

These requirements are not easy to meet, and other proponents of nuclear subsidies are, in some cases, undermining them. The Nuclear Energy Institute “has proposed merging the highest and second-highest safety ratings”—measures of plant safety produced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—which “would effectively render the rating meaningless” (p. 24). In Connecticut, the Millstone nuclear plant’s “owner refused to make a disclosure” when seeking subsidies (p. 41).

Let us return to the most basic assumption needed for the argument for subsidies to stick, namely that utilities would replace shut down nuclear plants with fossil fueled plants. This is possible but by no means necessary, especially with continued falling costs for renewable energy and storage technologies. The energy industry is changing so rapidly that what the UCS report attempts, to forecast costs and plan over multi-decadal periods, is all but impossible to do with any degree of certainty.

Further, the report’s inputs to the electricity planning model are already outdated. For example, the central cost figures it uses for nuclear reactor costs are significantly lower than the costs of the two reactors currently being constructed in the state of Georgia. In contrast, costs of solar PV plants and wind turbines are significantly higher than the most recent numbers. Renewables are not just getting cheaper, they are also quick to construct.

All these factors undermine the report’s central assumption that nuclear plants will be replaced by fossil fueled plants. To be fair, the UCS report does call for periodically assessing whether continued support is necessary and cost effective. But such support might already not be cost effective. All told, the economic basis for subsidies is uncertain at best; more likely, it is flawed. Either way, it may be best to get onward with the transition from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewables.

Radiation Free Lakeland 2nd Dec 2018Is it OK to have Radiocaesium and Transuranics in a Childrens Play Area on the Beach? Last thursday Radiation Free Lakeland were invited to Cleator Moor Civic Hall for the West Cumbria Site Stakeholder meeting (Environment and Health). We have deliberately shunned these meetings thinking that they are PR exercises for the industry.

The meetings are billed as a way of holding the industry and regulators to account but our experience on thursday confirmed our suspicions. We were invited to the meeting to make a presentation on our citizen science project with nuclear science students in the US.

We had been sending samples to the US from the whole of the Cumbrian coast for over a year. The US undergraduate student’s findings shocked us. A full third of the samples taken were contaminated with material that can only have come from decades of Sellafield’s reprocessing.

At the meeting we listened from 1pm to 4pm to the industry and the regulators congratulate themselves endlessly for “reducing emissions” (continuing piling on the crapola in word and deed) and then we got a chance to make the 15 minute presentation at 4pm. There was no press in the room. We had told them we would be there but apparently they never bother going, instead they prefer to wait for Sellafield’s press release. The chair of the meeting was clearly biased in favour of the industry and even went so far at the end of the meeting to say that “if
only you came and listened and understood more the gap between us (!) would be bridged”. I took that to mean that if we were only browbeaten enough we would learn to love Nukiller Big Brother and not hold them to account
with our pesky questions.

Indeed, we could see those articles as pivotal in the current hostile environment against Assange; the purpose of which is presumably to prepare the way for the extradition of Assange to the US. Meanwhile, the Mueller inquiry into alleged links between US president Donald Trump and Russia – and Assange – is gaining headlines on an almost daily basis. And there is evidence that Assange has been secretly indicted and that an extradition request is imminent.

In such an environment, media outlets must provide hard evidence to substantiate allegations, and not simply fall back on anonymous ‘sources’ (usually code for spooks). The people these allegations target deserve better, and so do readers

Former diplomat challenges ‘fake’ Guardian claims about Julian Assange meeting Paul Manafort The Canary Tom Coburg 3rd December 2018 A former consul and first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has spoken out against a “fake story” from the Guardian. Speaking to The Canary, Fidel Narváez insisted that the claim that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is entirely false.

The Canary has also seen a copy of correspondence to the Guardian from the same diplomat. In these, he makes a formal complaint, accusing the newspaper of fabricating an earlier story about a Russian plot to smuggle Assange to Russia.The Manafort claim The Canary previously reported on criticisms from WikiLeaks and others which stressed that Guardian claims about Manafort meeting Assange in 2013, 2015 and March 2016 were false.

WikiLeaks said it was preparing to sue the Guardian on the matter. And Manafort is also considering legal action, saying this story is “totally false and deliberately libellous”.

Narváez was initially consul and then first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy from 2010 to July 2018. He has now told The Canary that, to his knowledge, Manafort made no visits at any time during that period. He insisted:

It is impossible for any visitor to enter the embassy without going through very strict protocols and leaving a clear record: obtaining written approval from the ambassador, registering with security personnel, and leaving a copy of ID. The embassy is the most surveilled on Earth; not only are there cameras positioned on neighbouring buildings recording every visitor, but inside the building every movement is recorded with CCTV cameras, 24/7. In fact, security personnel have always spied on Julian and his visitors. It is simply not possible that Manafort visited the embassy.

In response, the Guardian told The Canary:

This story relied on a number of sources. We put these allegations to both Paul Manafort and Julian Assange’s representatives prior to publication. Neither responded to deny the visits taking place. We have since updated the story to reflect their denials.

Prior to the Guardian publishing the article, however, WikiLeaks did deny that the visits took place. It did that via a tweet in response to an email to Assange’s lawyers from one of the journalists who authored the article, saying how the Guardian was planning to run the story. The first published version of the article did not contain this WikiLeaksdenial.

And that’s not the only disputed Guardian piece…

There is another Guardian story by the same authors that Narváez also disputes.

On 21 September 2018, the Guardianclaimed there was a plan to smuggle Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy via a diplomatic vehicle, and from there to Russia. But according to the article, the plan was called off after UK authorities refused to recognise that Assange was due diplomatic protection. The Guardian also referred to an alternative plan that would have seen Assange transported to Ecuador…………..

There are all sorts of internecine battles being waged inside the Ecuadorian Government that provide motive to feed false claims about Assange to the Guardian. Senain, the Ecuadorian intelligence service that the Guardian says showed it the incriminating report, has been furious with Assange for years, ever since WikiLeaks published files relating to the agency’s hacking and malware efforts.

……..A hostile environment of reputation-damaging ‘fake stories’

Narváez is accusing the Guardian of multiple fabrications. This is made worse by the fact that the articles in question were subsequently reproduced by numerous media outlets.

Narváez told The Canary that:

Luke Harding and Dan Collyns, the authors of the Manafort fake story, are the same ones who wrote the Russia smuggling plot fake story, and their ‘sources’ are most probably the same. I find it incredible that the Guardian allows these people to repeatedly damage the paper’s credibility and reputation.

Indeed, we could see those articles as pivotal in the current hostile environment against Assange; the purpose of which is presumably to prepare the way for the extradition of Assange to the US. Meanwhile, the Mueller inquiry into alleged links between US president Donald Trump and Russia – and Assange – is gaining headlines on an almost daily basis. And there is evidence that Assange has been secretly indicted and that an extradition request is imminent.

Brett Sholtis, bsholtis@ydr.com York Daily Record, June 12, 2017 A new Penn State College of Medicine study has found a link between the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and thyroid cancer cases in southcentral Pennsylvania.

The study marks the first time the partial meltdown can be connected to specific cancer cases, the researchers have said.

The findings may pose a dramatic challenge to the nuclear energy industry’s position that radiation released had no impact on human health.

The study was published Monday in the medical journal Laryngoscope, one day before Exelon Corp. announced that Three Mile Island would close in 2019. It’s likely to come as another blow to a nuclear power industry already struggling to stay profitable.

Exelon officials declined to comment on the findings, pointing out that it doesn’t own the damaged reactor and wasn’t running the plant during the accident…….

thyroid cancer caused by low-level radiation has a different “mutational signal” than most thyroid cancer, Goldenberg said. He and his colleagues used molecular research that had been pioneered after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to find that genetic signal. …..

The next step is to expand the study by tapping into resources from other regional hospitals, he said.

With four other nuclear weapons protesters, I will appear in Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Court, charged with trespassing at a sprawling 122-acre nuclear weapons manufacturing complex 12 miles south of the city. It’s officially called the Kansas City National Security Campus, conjuring up images of college courses being taught, not weapons capable of leveling cities being built there.

On Memorial Day, the day to commemorate the dead in wars, we crossed a purple line painted on a road leading to the plant’s entrance. We were immediately taken into custody by police and other security agents and booked for breaking the law.

The Kansas City plant, operated by Honeywell, produces 85 percent of the nonnuclear components that go into the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It was opened in 2015 after its predecessor plant, contaminated by chemical toxins and flooding, was forced to shut down.

I began my public protests against nuclear weapons in 1980, shortly after I became NCR editor. During the early 1980s, the U.S. bishops, encouraged by about a dozen so-called “peace bishops,” including now-retired Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Tom Gumbleton, took up the thorny issue of war and peace in the modern era.

NCR urged the bishops to advocate for a complete moral rejection of nuclear deterrence. We viewed this as an unacceptable policy of terror. In the end, we were encouraged by the bishops’ pastoral. We hoped it would stir consciences. We hoped our nation would move toward reducing its nuclear stockpiles.

Nuclear disarmament has been painfully slow. The world made progress in the 1980s and 1990s, but then the movement stalled.

In recent years, we have begun a process of “updating” our nuclear weapons. In fact, we have replaced some weapons systems with other, sometimes “smaller” nuclear weapons (still as large or larger than the one dropped over Hiroshima, Japan) that could plausibly be used in wider circumstances. Critics worry these weapons can blur the line between conventional and nonconventional weaponry, making their use more likely, while moving the world into larger nuclear catastrophe.

The United States will need to spend $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize and maintain its nuclear weapons, according to a government estimate. The report, released in November 2017 by the Congressional Budget Office, said the $1.2 trillion includes $800 billion to operate and sustain existing forces and $400 billion to modernize them through 2046.

We are being lulled into a false sense that these weapons are deterring war. Meanwhile, we have lost any semblance of moral high ground. Clutching our nuclear weapons, building new ones, how can we reasonably demand that North Korea “denuclearize” its own weaponry? How can we reasonably demand that Iran stop efforts to build a nuclear bomb?

I believe we live on borrowed time. Since 1950, the world has experienced at least 32 “Broken Arrows,” meaning unintended accidents involving nuclear weapons. On more than one occasion, only minutes and frantic wise choices separated the planet from nuclear Armageddon.

Our bishops have largely gone silent on the issue of nuclear weapons since the 1980s and since the appointments by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI of less socially inclined church leaders. The Vatican in recent years has been more vocal.

When the new Kansas City nuclear weapons plant was under construction, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, then the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations, came to Kansas City in July 2011. He offered an unequivocal condemnation of nuclear weapons, the strongest to that point by a Vatican representative.

“Viewed from a legal, political, security and most of all moral perspective, there is no justification today for the continued maintenance of nuclear weapons,” he said. This was a clear swipe at the U.S. policy of maintaining nuclear weapons to deter their usage.

Since then, Pope Francis has condemned nuclear deterrence with equal vigor. He has said spending money on weapons that cannot be used robs humanity. He has become the first pontiff to condemn the use and very possession of these weapons.

Unfortunately, such condemnations seldom make it to the pulpits of most Kansas City-area parishes, some of which have members who earn their livings at the nuclear weapons plant.

And so I joined Sunny Jordan Hamrick, a member of a local intentional Christian community; Lu Mountenay, a Community of Christ minister; Henry Stoever, an attorney and chair of the local PeaceWorks Kansas City; and Brian Terrell, a Catholic Worker in Maloy, Iowa, last Memorial Day to take my protests one step further, to engage in civil disobedience.

For a half dozen years, scores of us have trekked from the retired weapons plant to the new one, a 10-mile walk, on Memorial Day. We’ve carried signs, waved at cars going by. Each year, at journey’s end, in front of the plant, we read a list of names of former plant workers who have died of cancers linked to plant toxins.

A friend asked me if I thought my protest would make a difference. I answered that you never know. I’ve long been impressed by the words of the late Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan who, asked a similar question, answered: “I protest because I cannot not protest.”

It is tempting to feel within the belly of the U.S. nuclear beast that pleading to end nuclear madness is done to little or no avail. However, these feelings can be ill-based. In the last decade, countless millions have joined forces to speak out.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, an umbrella group of more than 500 nonprofit organizations in 103 nations, has been responsible for the treaty and was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work. The campaign’s website maintains a page on the status of the treaty.

My protest was public, yet quite personal. I have seven grandchildren, ages 3 to 13, and want them to grow up in a world without nuclear weapons. In the weeks leading to my protest and arrest, I explained to each of them, as best I could, why their grandfather was going to get arrested. I told them not to be afraid, that I would be OK, and that I was doing this because I loved them.

It is my hope years from now they will remember their grandfather was a protester. If nuclear weapons are then still around, perhaps it will nudge them to also become protesters.

Radio-active legacy of Zuptoid nuclear interference – Yelland, BIZ News, By Chris Yelland, 3 Dec 18, Independent reports are being received by EE Publishers that energy minister Jeff Radebe has requested the Necsa board to provide reasons why it should not be removed, and that issues relating the Necsa chairman are central to this matter.

It appears that the issues raised by the minister with the board concern matters of governance, engagements with Russian nuclear interests and possible unauthorised research reactor deals with Russia’s Rusatom, overseas trips by the Necsa chairman, unauthorised media releases, articles and/or communications, and apparent conflicts of interest.

Formal questions have been put to Minister Radebe, to Necsa chairman Dr Kelvin Kemm and to Necsa CEO Phumzile Tshelane, including a request for confirmation as to whether the reports being received are correct or not……

Necsa is the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, a state-owned enterprise undertaking R&D and commercial activities in the field of nuclear energy and radiation sciences, and the production of medical nuclear radioisotopes and associated services. Necsa is also responsible for processing source material, including uranium enrichment, and co-operating with other institutions, locally and abroad, on nuclear and related matters.

Over the last few years, Necsa has been embroiled in a number of debilitating operational, financial and governance challenges.

As a result of safety procedure lapses, Necsa’s NTP Radioisotopes plant, which produced a significant share of the world’s commercial medical nuclear radioisotope, Molybdenum-99, was shut down by South Africa’s National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) in November 2017, which lasted almost a full year. ………

It was announced in mid-November that the NTP Radioisotopes plant was back in operation after conditional approval to restart was given by South Africa’s National Nuclear Regulator (NNR).

NTP Radioisotopes normally has a revenue of about R1.3bn a year, providing a contribution of more than 50% to the revenue of the Necsa group. The closure of the NTP production plant for a year has therefore obviously had a devastating financial impact.

There are also wider concerns regarding the financial health of Necsa. The Auditor General (AG) has raised ongoing concerns about inadequate financial provisions by Necsa for decommissioning and dismantling (D & D) costs at the end-of-life of Necsa’s SAFARI-1 research reactor.

As a result, Necsa’s annual financial statements for the year ending 31 March 2018, which were due to be published by end September 2018, have still not been tabled.

1.This Month

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Changing climate change“2040” paints an optimistic picture of the future of the environment

The film focuses on technological and agricultural solutions that are already being implemented to help combat climate change, The Economist Feb 19th 2019

by C.G. | BERLIN ……….In “2040”, a documentary which premiered at the Berlinale, Mr Gameau seeks to wrest hope from the bleak reports of climate change. He was inspired by Project Drawdown, the first comprehensive plan to reverse global warming, and the film is intended as a “virtual letter to his four-year-old daughter to show her an alternative future”. “Many films,” Mr Gameau thinks, are too dystopian, and “paint a future that is really hard to engage and to connect with”. “2040” acknowledges that the Earth has set off down a hazardous path, but focuses on the work that is being done now to steer the right course. What, the film asks, could make 2040 a time worth living in?…. (subscribers only) https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/02/19/2040-paints-an-optimistic-picture-of-the-future-of-the-environment